Tuesday, November 3, 2015

The sexual grievance industry mounts a furious challenge to the Safe Campus Act--and the rationales are stomach-turning

The founder of SurvJustice bemoaned society's purported tolerance of sexual assault: "We actively avoid serious prosecutions and hearings on this issue," she complained. But, in fact, it's not society that advocates avoiding serious prosecutions of sexual violence, it's the sexual grievance industry. SurvJustice itself recently opposed the Safe Campus Act, which would require that college sexual assault claims be reported to police before the school can take action on its own.

By opposing the Safe Campus Act, the sexual grievance industry makes clear that it doesn't care a whit about fair processes for the accused, it only cares about propping up a broken system where every women who cries rape is automatically believed. One prominent opponent of the Safe Campus Act declared that "we are not at a point" to worry about due process for those accused of sexual assault. She announced: "If we are to truly believe in due process for all, we must prioritize the needs of survivors first and foremost." Elura Nanos opposes the Safe Campus Act and explained that young men can protect themselves from false rape claims by . . . wait for it . . . speaking out against predatory behavior. Alexandra Brodsky declared that some who believe college rape cases should be handled by the criminal justice system are practicing "a subtle misogny." In Ohio, student activists think the Safe Campus Act would "protect" the "wrong people."

Worse, when they attempt to persuade by using logic, they only expose the shallowness of their position. Senator Claire McCaskill opposes the Safe Campus Act because it creates this supposed double-standard: young women robbed at gunpoint do not need to involve police to get their assailants expelled whereas, under this Safe Campus Act, police would need to be involved. McCaskill's double-standard is a straw man. She did not, because she cannot, cite even one instance where a college handled armed robbery internally without involving the police. Every serious crime on campus, except for sexual assault, is, in fact, handled by the police and not internally by the college. The Safe Campus Act would do what activists have long advocated but apparently never really meant: force colleges to treat sexual assault as a serious crime.

It's time to for all persons of goodwill to call the extremists on their woefully misguided crusade because they have it exactly backwards: due process was invented to protect the innocent, not the "wrong people," and that's why an accusation should never be tantamount to a finding of guilt. False and wrongful rape claims are a significant problem. See, e.g., here and here. Impartial legal scholars say the current college system is grossly unfair to men accused of sexual assault. A court recently ripped off the scab and revealed an ugly pus--students accused of sexual assault are being treated unjustly. All of us can be concerned about injustice to both the victims of sexual violence and the victims of wrongful accusations of sexual violence without compromising our fidelity to either group--it's not all-or-nothing, it's not a zero sum game. The gender zealots who dominate the public discourse on these issues need to understand that it's not always about them--and their insistence on propping up a system where public confidence has been undermined does no favors to sexual assault victims, much less the the innocents who are wrongly accused.

It's time for the good people of America to stand up and say, "Enough!"